Careless Whisper
by John Bigboote
Summary: A minor oversight.


"_Every time I hear Outlander I totally forget about that show with the lady who's a WWII nurse transported to back in time to Jacobite Scotland and I just think of that movie where Jim Caviezel is Beowulf from outer space."_

\- me on GameFAQs talking about isekai shows

"_Young fool. You will pay the price for your lack of vision!"_

\- Emperor Palpatine

* * *

Seiya wasn't very cautious about forming battle strategies. He wasn't very cautious about devising sustainable long-term tactics. He wasn't very cautious about scoping out dungeons in advance. He wasn't very cautious with checking treasure boxes for traps. He wasn't very cautious with grooming his hair. He wasn't very cautious about training. He wasn't very cautious about maintaining his armor.

And least surprising of all, he wasn't very cautious when he had sex. Princess Tiana always had to act with extra prudence so all of Seiya's piled on carelessness didn't end in a cataclysmic disaster that would haunt his soul through all of his future lifetimes.

The remains of the amphibious Demon Lord were smoking in a heap on the floor of his castle throne room. Burnt, scaly, and slightly moist, he looked a little like Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2 after being dunked in a giant deep fryer.

While Seiya was flexing over his victory like Scott Steiner in math class, Tiana was struck with a sudden bout of weakness. She leaned on her cleric staff to keep her balance, lightly gasping as if something had frightened her.

She started feeling sick. She closed her eyes with her head lowered to fight it off. It was the same kind of sick she sometimes felt in the morning for the last few weeks, only this didn't come with the nurturing reminder of why she felt sick.

She sensed energy creeping back into the charred thing crumpled between her and Seiya. She could faintly smell the Demon Lord's scorched flesh fading away and repairing itself from the inside out. This was an extension of her natural healing powers that had only recently developed on its own. The same magic that allowed her to first sense the life inside of her now helped her sense the life of everything around her.

"What's wrong, Tiana?" Seiya asked her with one of his rarer looks of concern. He kept his arms around her shoulders so she could lean into him. "Too much fighting? Let me give you a health potion…"

"He's not dead," she managed to say in another frail gasp.

"What are you talking about?" Seiya looked at her with confusion.

"The Demon Lord. You only destroyed his first life. He's already regenerating. He's almost ready to wake up."

Nodding, Seiya helped her find her balance before he let her out of his arms. He drew his sword and, with no further warning, absolutely went to town on the burnt corpse of an expired salientian.

He began by violently decapitating the Demon Lord's head from the rest of his body. He frantically followed up by cutting off all of its limbs, including the stumps of the limbs that had already been hacked away during the final battle. He then proceeded with something in the vicinity of four Hellfire spells, eight Atomic Explosion spells, at least a dozen Holy Hand Grenades, and one Black Hole Absolution. He used every devastating item and ability he had left in his arsenal. Not because he came carefully prepared for the event (he never did), but because he always bogged down his equipment with whatever did the most damage with no regard to optimizing his inventory weight.

The Demon Lord's already mangled burning remains were reduced all the way down to a smoldering, shapeless, microscopic pile of ashes. Frogger wasn't gonna get to the other side of the street in this game.

"Now is he dead?" Seiya asked Tiana with a voice that was eerily relaxed considering the inhuman rage and damnation he had just unleashed. No matter how often he repeated the same optimistic mottos about how everything was "gonna be okay" and "something will work out," he would always go the extra mile to make things work out for his lady. The one thing he _was _cautious about was making sure she was never hurt or scared.

"His life presence has been terminated from the womb of this world," Tiana said with relief. She held her staff straight at her side again, no longer using it as a crutch.

Seiya awkwardly blinked. Scratched his head. Slightly quirked one of his eyebrows.

"Huh. Well that's a weird way of putting it…"

He stepped in front of her so he was looking down into her eyes. Her slight shiver told him something was still bothering her.

"Is everything all right?" he asked quietly. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

"Seiya, I'm pre-…" Tiana's face changed to a deep blush as she meekly swallowed her own voice. She stopped herself from making the full confession, not wanting to say anything that could worry her beloved hero. It would be better if she told him the truth once they were back in her palace, where they could settle down and handle the whole conversation delicately. The middle of the battlefield wasn't the place for distressing over such personal affairs, and Tiana didn't want to distract Seiya from his duty.

She thought of the things the two of them could do now that their mission was over. Seiya would become an honorary gent of the castle. She pictured him wearing the most exquisite armor and finery in the kingdom personally fitted to his lean, sturdy, muscular frame. They would live together, eat dinner together, watch the morning sunrise together, go riding together, raise a family together, share baths in the royal bathhouse together. Her father would be overjoyed to let her marry the man known across all of Ixphoria for defeating the Demon Lord. With all of her knowledge, patience, and wealth, she'd help Seiya develop some etiquette and—more importantly—a sense of responsibility. It felt like getting to live the life of a goddess without having to go through all the trials, tribulations, and tragic misery of actually becoming one.

Before her thoughts drifted too far into the future, Tiana shook her head and brought herself back into the present. They needed to get out the demon's nest before they could worry about anything else.

"I'm praying we'll have a safe trip home," Tiana gazed up at her hero with a shy smile that hid what she really wanted to tell him. Her royal upbringing and her temple training made it easy for her to slip into the role of a pious servant of Heaven.

"Uhh… Okay?" Seiya mumbled, still sensing there was something a little off about the way she was acting while not completely catching her drift. He shrugged it off without thinking about it much more. His reckless lack of caution often left him with an abundance of cluelessness. When his naive personality wasn't frustrating his traveling companion, it was making her giggle with admiration.

After narrowly preventing catastrophe and denying the Demon Lord the sweet-tasting dessert stored in Tiana's private inventory that would have made him powerful enough to annihilate every person on the planet, their adventure was coming to an end. They began the long journey out of the ruined demonic fortress so they could return to civilization and live happily ever after.

* * *

_Author's note: My philosophy is all JRPG healers have a little Mint Adenade / Mipha / Yumiko Kata in them._

_Author's note 2: Congratulations, Seiya. You're stuck for the rest of your life on a podunk Class B world and you're going to be the househusband of a cute cushy rich girl you deeply love. Enjoy your relatively unremarkable but perfectly adequate Good End. _


End file.
